Thursday, September 5, 2013

History of Dominican Republic

The Taínos

The Arawakan-speakingTaínos moved into Hispaniola from the north
east region of what is now known as South America, displacing earlier
inhabitants, c. AD 650.
They engaged in farming and fishing, and
hunting and gathering. The fierce
Caribs drove the Taínos to
the northeastern Caribbean during much of the 15th century. The estimates of
Hispaniola's population in 1492 vary widely, including one hundred thousand, three
hundred thousand, and four
hundred thousand to two million. Determining
precisely how many people lived on the island in pre-Columbian times is next to
impossible, as no accurate records exist. By 1492 the island
was divided into five Taíno chiefdoms.
The Spaniards arrived in 1492. After initially friendly relationships, the
Taínos resisted the conquest, led by the female Chief Anacaona of Xaragua and her ex-husband Chief Caonabo
of Maguana, as well as Chiefs Guacanagaríx, Guamá, Hatuey, and Enriquillo. The latter's successes gained his people
an autonomous enclave for a time on the island. Nevertheless, within a few years
after 1492 the population of Taínos had declined drastically, due to smallpox, genocide, execution and other diseases that arrived with the
Europeans, and from other
causes discussed below. The last record of pure Taínos in the country was from
1864. Still, Taíno biological heritage survived to an important extent, due to
intermixing. Census records from 1514 reveal that 40% of Spanish men in the
colony had Taíno wives, and some
present-day Dominicans have Taíno ancestry. Tainos
were stated to be extinct in Hispanola as a result of genocide by the
Spaniards. "By 1535, say the leading scholars on this grim
topic for all practical purposes, the native population was extinct." Remnants of the Taino culture include their cave
paintings, as well as pottery
designs which are still used in the small artisan village of Higüerito, Moca.

Spaniard and French
rule

Christopher
Columbus arrived on Hispaniola on December 5, 1492, during the first of his
four voyages to America. He
claimed the island for Spain and named it La Española. In 1496 Bartholomew
Columbus, Christopher's brother, built the city of Santo Domingo, Europe's
first permanent settlement in the "New World". The Spaniards created a plantation economy on the island. The colony
was the springboard for the further Spanish conquest of America and for decades
the headquarters of Spanish power in the hemisphere.
The Taínos nearly disappeared, above all, from European infectious
diseases to which they had no immunity. Other causes were
abuse, suicide, the breakup of family, starvation, the
encomienda system, which resembled a
feudal system in Medieval
Europe, war with the
Spaniards, changes in lifestyle, and mixing with other peoples. Laws passed for
the Indians' protection (beginning with the Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513) were never truly
enforced. Some scholars believe that las Casas exaggerated the Indian
population decline in an effort to persuade King Carlos to intervene, and
that encomenderos also
exaggerated it, in order to receive permission to import more African
slaves. Moreover, censuses of the time omitted the Indians
who fled into remote communities, where they
often joined with runaway Africans (cimarrones), producing Zambos. Also, Mestizos who were culturally Spanish were counted as
Spaniards, some Zambos as black, and some Indians as Mulattos.
Santo Domingo's population saw a spectacular increase during the 18th
century, as it rose from some 6,000 in 1737 to about 125,000 in 1790.
Approximately, this was composed of 40,000 white landowners, 25,000 black or
mulatto freedmen, and 60,000 slaves.
After its conquest of the Aztecs and Incas, Spain neglected its
Caribbean holdings. French buccaneers settled in western Hispaniola, and by the
1697 Treaty of
Ryswick, Spain ceded the (now Haitian) area to France. France created a
wealthy colony Saint-Domingue there, with a population – at the end of the 18th
century – 90% enslaved and overall four times as numerous (500,000 vs 125,000)
as the Spanish area (now Dominican).
France came to own the island in 1795, when by the Peace of Basel Spain ceded Santo Domingo as a
consequence of the French Revolutionary Wars. At the
time, Saint-Domingue's slaves, led by Toussaint Louverture, were in revolt
against France. In 1801 they captured Santo Domingo, thus controlling the entire
island; but in 1802 an army sent by Napoleon captured Toussaint Louverture and sent him
to France as prisoner. However, Toussaint Louverture's lieutenants, and yellow fever, succeeded in
expelling the French again from Saint-Domingue, which in 1804 the rebels made
independent as the Republic of Haiti. Eastwards, France continued to rule
Spanish Santo Domingo.
In 1805, Haitian troops of general Henri Christophe invaded Santo Domingo and
sacked the towns of Santiago de los Caballeros and Moca,
killing most of their residents and helping to lay the foundation for two
centuries of animosity between the two countries.

After a dozen years of discontent and failed independence plots by various
groups, Santo Domingo's former Lieutenant-Governor (top administrator), José Núñez de
Cáceres, declared the colony's independence as Spanish
Haiti, on November 30, 1821. He requested the new state's admission to Simón Bolívar's
republic of Gran
Colombia, but Haitian forces, led by Jean-Pierre Boyer, invaded just nine weeks
later, in February 1822.
As Toussaint Louverture had done two decades earlier, the Haitians abolished
slavery. They also nationalized most private property, including all the
property of landowners who had left in the wake of the invasion; much Church property; as
well as all property belonging to the former rulers, the Spanish Crown.
Boyer also placed more emphasis on cash crops grown on large plantations, reformed the
tax system, and allowed foreign trade. The new system was widely opposed by
Dominican farmers, although it produced a boom in sugar and coffee production.
All levels of education collapsed; the university was shut down, as it was
starved both of resources and students, with young Dominican men from 16 to 25
years old being drafted into the Haitian army. Boyer's occupation troops, who
were largely Dominicans, were unpaid, and had to "forage and sack" from
Dominican civilians. Haiti imposed a "heavy tribute" on the Dominican
people. Many whites fled
Santo Domingo for Puerto
Rico and Cuba (both still under Spanish
rule), Venezuela, and elsewhere.
In the end the economy faltered and taxation became more onerous. Rebellions
occurred even by Dominican freedmen, while Dominicans and Haitians worked
together to oust Boyer from power. Anti-Haitian movements of several kinds –
pro-independence, pro-Spanish, pro-French, pro-British, pro-United States –
gathered force following the overthrow of Boyer in 1843.:page number needed

Independence

La Trinitaria was the organizer of the formation
and independence of the Dominican Republic.

In 1838 Juan
Pablo Duarte founded a secret society called La Trinitaria, which sought the complete
independence of Santo Domingo without any foreign intervention. Matías Ramón Mella and Francisco del Rosario
Sánchez, despite not being among the founding members of La Trinitaria, were
decisive in the fight for independence. Duarte, Mella, and Sánchez are
considered the three Founding Fathers of the Dominican Republic. On February 27,
1844, the Trinitarios (the members of La Trinitaria), declared the
independence from Haiti. They were backed by Pedro Santana, a wealthy cattle rancher from El Seibo, who
became general of the army of the nascent Republic. The Dominican Republic's
first Constitution was adopted
on November 6, 1844, and was modeled after the United States Constitution.
The decades that followed were filled with tyranny, factionalism, economic
difficulties, rapid changes of government, and exile for political opponents.
Threatening the nation's independence were renewed Haitian invasions occurring
in 1844, 1845–49, 1849–55, and 1855–56.
Meanwhile, archrivals Santana and Buenaventura Báez held power most of the
time, both ruling arbitrarily. They promoted competing plans to annex the new
nation to another power: Santana favored Spain, and Báez the United States.

Restoration
republic

In 1861, after imprisoning, silencing, exiling, and executing many of his
opponents and due to political and economic reasons, Santana signed a pact with
the Spanish Crown and reverted the Dominican nation to colonial status, the only
Latin American country to do so. His ostensible aim was to protect the nation
from another Haitian annexation. But
opponents launched the War of Restoration in 1863, led by Santiago
Rodríguez, Benito
Monción, and Gregorio Luperón, among others. Haiti,
fearful of the re-establishment of Spain as colonial power on its border, gave
refuge and supplies to the revolutionaries. The United
States, then fighting its own Civil War, vigorously protested the Spanish
action. After two years of fighting, Spain abandoned the island in 1865.
Political strife again prevailed in the following years; warlords ruled,
military revolts were extremely common, and the nation amassed debt. It was now
Báez's turn to act on his plan of annexing the country to the
United States, where two successive presidents were supportive. U.S. President
Grant desired a naval base at Samaná and also a place for resettling
newly freed Blacks. The treaty, which
included U.S. payment of $1.5 million for Dominican debt repayment, was defeated
in the United
States Senate in 1870 on a vote
of 28–28, two-thirds being required.

Báez was toppled in 1874, returned, and was toppled for good in 1878. A new
generation was thence in charge, with the passing of Santana (he died in 1864)
and Báez from the scene. Relative peace came to the country in the 1880s, which
saw the coming to power of General Ulises Heureaux.
"Lilís", as the new president was nicknamed, enjoyed a period of popularity.
He was, however, "a consummate dissembler", who put the nation deep into debt
while using much of the proceeds for his personal use and to maintain his police
state. Heureaux became rampantly despotic and unpopular. In 1899 he was
assassinated. However, the relative calm over which he presided allowed
improvement in the Dominican economy. The sugar industry was modernized,and the country attracted foreign
workers and immigrants.

20th century

From 1902 on, short-lived governments were again the norm, with their power
usurped by caudillos in parts of the
country. Furthermore, the national government was bankrupt and, unable to pay
Heureaux's debts, faced the threat of military intervention by France and other
European creditor powers.
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt sought to prevent
European intervention, largely to protect the routes to the future Panama Canal, as the canal
was already under construction. He made a small military
intervention to ward off the European powers, proclaimed his famous Roosevelt
Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, and in 1905 obtained Dominican
agreement for U.S. administration of Dominican customs, then the chief source of
income for the Dominican government. A 1906 agreement provided for the
arrangement to last 50 years. The United States agreed to use part of the
customs proceeds to reduce the immense foreign debt of the Dominican Republic,
and assumed responsibility for said debt.
After six years in power, President Ramón Cáceres (who had himself
assassinated Heureaux) was
assassinated in 1911. The result was several years of great political
instability and civil war. U.S. mediation by the William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson
administrations achieved only a short respite each time. A political deadlock in
1914 was broken after an ultimatum by Wilson telling Dominicans to choose a
president or see the U.S. impose one. A provisional president was chosen, and
later the same year relatively free elections put former president (1899–1902)
Juan Isidro Jimenes Pereyra back in
power. To achieve a more broadly supported government, Jimenes named opposition
individuals to his Cabinet. But this brought no peace and, with his former Secretary of War Desiderio Arias maneuvering
to depose him and despite a U.S. offer of military aid against Arias, Jimenes
resigned on May 7, 1916.

Wilson thus ordered the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic. U.S.
Marines landed on May 16, 1916, and had control of the country two months
later. The military government established by the U.S., led by Rear Admiral Harry Shepard
Knapp, was widely repudiated by Dominicans. U.S. naval officers had to fill some cabinet
posts, as Dominicans refused to serve in the administration. Censorship and
limits on public speech were imposed. The guerrilla war against the U.S. forces
was met with a vigorous, often brutal response.
But the occupation regime, which kept most Dominican laws and institutions,
largely pacified the country, revived the economy, reduced the Dominican debt,
built a road network that at last interconnected all regions of the country, and
created a professional National Guard to replace the warring partisan units.
Opposition to the occupation continued, however, and after World War I it
increased in the U.S. as well. There, President Warren G. Harding (1921–23), Wilson's
successor, worked to end the occupation, as he had promised to do during his
campaign. U.S. government ended in October 1922, and elections were held in
March 1924.
The victor was former president (1902–03) Horacio Vásquez Lajara, who had cooperated
with the U.S. He was inaugurated on July 13, and the last U.S. forces left in
September. Vásquez gave the country six years of good government, in which
political and civil rights were respected and the economy grew strongly, in a
peaceful atmosphere.

In February 1930, when Vásquez attempted to win another term, opponents
rebelled, in secret alliance with the commander of the National Army (the former
National Guard), General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, by which the
latter remained 'neutral' in face of the rebellion. Vásquez resigned. Trujillo
then stood for election himself, and in May was elected president virtually
unopposed, after a violent campaign against his opponents.
There was considerable economic growth during Trujillo's long and iron-fisted
regime, although a great deal of the wealth was taken by the dictator and other
regime elements. There was progress in healthcare, education, and
transportation, with the building of hospitals and clinics, schools, and roads
and harbors. Trujillo also carried out an important housing construction program
and instituted a pension plan. He finally negotiated an undisputed border with
Haiti in 1935, and achieved the end of the 50-year customs agreement in 1941,
instead of 1956. He made the country debt-free in 1947.
This was accompanied by absolute repression and the copious use of murder,
torture, and terrorist methods against the opposition. Trujillo renamed Santo Domingo to "Ciudad
Trujillo" (Trujillo City), the
nation's – and the Caribbean's – highest mountain La Pelona Grande (Spanish for: The Great Bald)
to "Pico Trujillo" (Spanish for: Trujillo Peak), and many towns and a province.
Some other places he renamed after members of his family. By the end of his
first term in 1934 he was the country's wealthiest person, and one of the wealthiest in the
world by the early 1950s; near the end of
his regime his fortune was an estimated $800 million.
In 1937 Trujillo (who was himself one-quarter Haitian), in an event
known as the Parsley
Massacre or, in the Dominican Republic, as El Corte (The
Cutting), ordered the
Army to kill Haitians living on the Dominican side of the border. The Army
killed an estimated 17,000 to 35,000 Haitians over six days, from the night of
October 2, 1937 through October 8, 1937. To avoid leaving evidence of the Army's
involvement, the soldiers used machetes rather than bullets. The soldiers of
Trujillo were said to have interrogated anyone with dark skin, using the shibbolethperejil (parsley) to tell Haitians from Dominicans
when necessary; the 'r' of perejil was of difficult pronunciation for
Haitians. As a result
of the massacre, the Dominican Republic agreed to pay Haiti US$750,000, later
reduced to US$525,000.
On November 25, 1960 Trujillo killed three of the four Mirabal sisters,
nicknamed Las Mariposas (The Butterflies). The victims were Patria
Mercedes Mirabal (born on February 27, 1924), Argentina Minerva Mirabal (born on
March 12, 1926), and Antonia María Teresa Mirabal (born on October 15, 1935).
Minerva was an aspiring lawyer who was extremely opposed to Trujillo's
dictatorship since Trujillo had begun to make rude sexual advances towards her.
The sisters have received many honors posthumously, and have many memorials in
various cities in the Dominican Republic. Salcedo, their home province, changed
its name to Provincia Hermanas Mirabal (Mirabal
Sisters Province). The International
Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is observed on the
anniversary of their deaths.
For a long time, the US and the Dominican elite supported the Trujillo
government. This support persisted despite the assassinations of political
opposition, the massacre of Haitians, and Trujillo's plots against other
countries. The US believed Trujillo was the lesser of two or more evils. The U.S.
finally broke with Trujillo in 1960, after Trujillo's agents attempted to
assassinate the Venezuelan president, Rómulo Betancourt, a fierce critic of
Trujillo. Trujillo was
assassinated on May 30, 1961.
In February 1963, a democratically elected government under leftist Juan Bosch took office but was
overthrown in September. In April 1965, after 19 months of military rule, a
pro-Bosch revolt broke out. Days later, U.S.
President Lyndon Johnson, concerned that Communists might
take over the revolt and create a "second Cuba", sent the Marines, followed
immediately by the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and other elements of the
XVIIIth Airborne Corps in Operation Powerpack. "We don't propose to
sit here in a rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communist set up
any government in the western hemisphere", Johnson said. The forces were
soon joined by comparatively small contingents from the Organization of American
States. All these remained in the country for over a year and left after
supervising elections in 1966 won by Joaquín Balaguer, who had been Trujillo's
last puppet-president.
Balaguer remained in power as president for 12 years. His tenure was a period
of repression of human rights and civil liberties, ostensibly to keep pro-Castro
or pro-communist parties out of power. His rule was further criticized for a
growing disparity between rich and poor. It was, however, praised for an
ambitious infrastructure program, which included large housing projects, sports
complexes, theaters, museums, aqueducts, roads, highways, and the massive Columbus
Lighthouse, completed in a subsequent tenure in 1992.

In 1978, Balaguer was succeeded in the presidency by opposition candidate Antonio Guzmán Fernández, of
the Dominican Revolutionary Party
(PRD). Another PRD win in 1982 followed, under Salvador Jorge Blanco. Under the PRD
presidents, the Dominican Republic experienced a period of relative freedom and
basic human rights. Balaguer regained the presidency in 1986, and was re-elected
in 1990 and 1994, this last time just defeating PRD candidate José Francisco Peña
Gómez, a former mayor of Santo Domingo. The 1994 elections were flawed,
bringing on international pressure, to which Balaguer responded by scheduling
another presidential contest in 1996. This time Leonel Fernández
achieved the first-ever win for the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD),
which Bosch founded in 1973 after leaving the PRD (also founded by Bosch).
Fernández oversaw a fast-growing economy, with growth averaging 7.7% per year, a
drop in unemployment, and stable exchange and inflation rates.

Recent history

In 2000 the PRD's Hipólito Mejía won the election. This
was a time of economic troubles, and Mejía was
defeated in his re-election effort in 2004 by Fernández, who won re-election in
2008. Fernández
and the PLD are credited with initiatives that have moved the country forward
technologically, such as the construction of the Metro Railway ("El Metro"). On the other
hand, his administrations have also been accused of corruption.[70]Danilo Medina of the same
PLD party was elected president in 2012 under the promise of investing more on
social programs and education and less on infrastructure.